[suggestion] Starcraft 2 in 3D?

[Edfishy]

Using the nVidia stereo drivers (available at www.nvidia.com) you can give the 3D thing a shot using anaglyphic Red/Blue glasses in most games.

What you'll quickly find though is that since most older games weren't designed with S-3D in mind, you get things like reticules right in front of your face, or UI elements in uncomfortable positions. You'll also get a headache after 20 minutes of gameplay, so it's definitely more for the fun of it with Red/Blue anaglyphic glasses then anything else.

[Gifted]

From what I remember, I remember them talking about SC2 being available in Stereoscopic vision (pardon spelling or even an incorrect word) This may actually be cohesive to allow 3d to be played.

[Xyvik]

at the moment 3D gaming is only an overpriced gimmick heralded by nVidia, a company I refuse to support in any manner, shape, or form.

To put it bluntly, 3D hasn't even fully taken off in movies yet, where they have the big budget. Avatar gave me a headache half-way through and I'm going to rest my eyes before I venture out to see it again (if I do). 3D isn't going to add anything to gaming for a long time for the simple reason that, just right now, DX11 hasn't really added anything to gaming. Sure, AvP will help with that (tesselation on the alien models, for starters) but we are a LONG way from 3D.

Also to put it bluntly, there's nowhere near enough reason to have 3D in SC2. All it will do is make the cinematics look pretty. SC2 is lacking in the full strategic depth to make 3D depth worthwhile. A game like Supreme Commander could conceivably make use of 3D, but even then that would be limited. The game would have to be designed from the ground up to utilize 3D, and -then- it would make sense to put it in an RTS.

Do I like the idea? sure do! Plotting strategies based on realistic 3D terrain and having units that react in real 3D way, such as a 3D Homeworld, would be beautiful.

There's just no real place for it in SC2, except as eyecandy. And there's no way in hades I'm paying nVidia for eyecandy.

[Pandonetho]

Avatar gave me a headache half-way through

Avatar gave me a headache 10 minutes in.

[ArcherofAiur]

Avatar gave me a hard#$

[Nicol Bolas]

Agreed, using that logic VGAs are just a gimmick. Let's all just play text games or, at best, Supreme Commander all the way zoomed back.

Nonsense. There are legitimate reasons to hate this "3D" nonsense.

1: It's a brutal hack, and it shows. It doesn't look that good. It's not particularly convincing of an effect.

2: It's falls on its ass the minute your framerate drops below 120. A frame drop or two, and suddenly the effect is broken.

3: It is physically painful to many people.

I'm all for 3D displays. But only real, legitimate 3D displays. No glasses tricks. Nothing like that. Project a 3D image that I can see from various angles and see around.

Until we get something real, I don't want to hear about it.

[horror]

Story Mode in S-3D would be so amazing. And what about colossi stepping over cliffs?

The original idea was for the effect of colossi and reapers to look super cool jumping cliffs , and watching your base after you hear "nuke detected", and seeing a missile come from the sky and fall :cooler:

I wonder why are 120 Hz monitors necessary, if cinema has only 24 frames per second.

only certain cinemas show 3D in non-anaglyphical formats. There are different projectors used, that polarizes the light.

Believe me, if they could make 3D work on these more widely used monitors then they would. They're missing out on an enormous amount of product share and profit. They would not do this if there wasn't a good reason.

uhh, that's why it's till in development by groups like Sony...

What you'll quickly find though is that since most older games weren't designed with S-3D in mind, you get things like reticules right in front of your face, or UI elements in uncomfortable positions. You'll also get a headache after 20 minutes of gameplay, so it's definitely more for the fun of it with Red/Blue anaglyphic glasses then anything else.

It only gives you a headache because of the polarization. I think.
Polarised 3D Glasses (Wikipedia)

at the moment 3D gaming is only an overpriced gimmick heralded by nVidia, a company I refuse to support in any manner, shape, or form.

To put it bluntly, 3D hasn't even fully taken off in movies yet, where they have the big budget. Avatar gave me a headache half-way through and I'm going to rest my eyes before I venture out to see it again (if I do). 3D isn't going to add anything to gaming for a long time for the simple reason that, just right now, DX11 hasn't really added anything to gaming. Sure, AvP will help with that (tesselation on the alien models, for starters) but we are a LONG way from 3D.

Also to put it bluntly, there's nowhere near enough reason to have 3D in SC2. All it will do is make the cinematics look pretty. SC2 is lacking in the full strategic depth to make 3D depth worthwhile. A game like Supreme Commander could conceivably make use of 3D, but even then that would be limited. The game would have to be designed from the ground up to utilize 3D, and -then- it would make sense to put it in an RTS.

Do I like the idea? sure do! Plotting strategies based on realistic 3D terrain and having units that react in real 3D way, such as a 3D Homeworld, would be beautiful.

There's just no real place for it in SC2, except as eyecandy. And there's no way in hades I'm paying nVidia for eyecandy.

saying 3D hasn't taken off yet is like saying tv never took off 50 years back. Which it didn't. Yet. Polarised 3D with plastic glasses isn't good because of the cheaply made glasses. The actual I-Max 3D glasses are durable. imagine the first televisions made with materials used today. they'd probably fall to bits.

You're right in saying all 3D will do is make the game look pretty. But by saying that, you may as well port Starcraft 2 to your Super NES. Hey, all a computer's gonna do is make your game look prettier. And don't come telling me how much better the new infestor model looks compared to the old model.

practically, that's all 3D is. Eyecandy.
Also, for the record, when I started this thread, I wasn't talking about nVidia or some other 3rd party developer slapping their crappy patches to my kick-arse game, i was going for something on the lines of Blizzard releasing a patch in the next, say, 5 years (possibly Starcraft 2's release), or adding the feature to starcraft 3 (ha, by the time that comes out, you'll be able to taste the game). Anything not made by Blizzard would be tacky, and Blizzard making it a last minute decision would be tacky. When i started this thread, i had envisioned Blizzard building features from the ground up for 3D, and taking as long as they do to get it "just right" as the would-be motto goes.

Nonsense. There are legitimate reasons to hate this "3D" nonsense.

1: It's a brutal hack, and it shows. It doesn't look that good. It's not particularly convincing of an effect.

2: It's falls on its ass the minute your framerate drops below 120. A frame drop or two, and suddenly the effect is broken.

3: It is physically painful to many people.

I'm all for 3D displays. But only real, legitimate 3D displays. No glasses tricks. Nothing like that. Project a 3D image that I can see from various angles and see around.

Until we get something real, I don't want to hear about it.

To answer your argument:

1: The technology is still growing, and will continue to grow for the rest of civilization, just like tv

2: mhm, just like every other 2d game. "Hey there was a glitch, and super mario went through the wall. OMG what do you mean, super mario's not real?"

3:The technology is still growing, and will continue to grow for the rest of civilization, just like tv

I copy pasted 1 and 3, because they were generally the same

And lastly, Nic, if you can prove to me that they'll ever be able to project an image that's the real 3D deal in the next 1,000 years, without glasses tricks, or anything like that, you can take me out to dinner. For free. It's virtually impossible to create a 2D image that's actually 3D. It's contradictory.
Project a 3D image that you can see from various angles and see around? only one place you'll get that dude, and it's called real life.



Peace out

[Zahar]

Nonsense. There are legitimate reasons to hate this "3D" nonsense.

1: It's a brutal hack, and it shows. It doesn't look that good. It's not particularly convincing of an effect.

2: It's falls on its ass the minute your framerate drops below 120. A frame drop or two, and suddenly the effect is broken.

3: It is physically painful to many people.

I'm all for 3D displays. But only real, legitimate 3D displays. No glasses tricks. Nothing like that. Project a 3D image that I can see from various angles and see around.

Until we get something real, I don't want to hear about it.

1 - It's pretty good on games that run well with it. It's a matter of compatibility really, some stuff (as 2d images) completely ruin the experience because they appear on the wrong plan, but that's because they where made without 3d in mind. The 3d part of the games usualy works like a charm. You should try Dawn of War 2 with them, it looks so bland without in comparisson that I can no longer play it without the glasses. Mass Effect 1 is also beautiful, but the 2d objects are really boring because they appear in the center of the screen and are bright (targeting system and item popup circle are 2d objects). It feels VERY 3d tough.

2 - It's not that hard to run. I have a somewhat modest system (my VGA is still a Geforce 8800GTX) and Modern Warfare 2 runs flawlessly in 3d. Fallout 3 looks great but suffers major framerate drop. It really depends on the game code, and games that fully support it will probably run smooth. Battlefield Bad Company is being build to support it and I can't wait to fly a helicopter in 3d. It's possible I'll have to upgrade my system to play newer games on 3d tough, because it does cause a framerate drop. Not that I'd not buy a DX11 VGA when nvidia launched one anyway, so...

3 - It tires me more than the "normal" monitor, but not that much. I played for 4, maybe 5 hours the day I bought it and I never reached the "headache" level, just minor disconfort. Mind you, 5 hours. Never felt a thing playing 3 hours straight. It's personal tough. The documentation (of the product and in research material) says it becomes more and more confortable as your eye muscles get more used to the focus shifts at new ranges you are not used to.

3d without glasses? I hope you can live many, many years. Holograms are not gonna happen for a long time.

IT's not perfect, but works really well. Once most games are compatible, playing without it will be exactly like playing in an old computer with a sucky VGA - of course, you can still play everything, but without the eye candy. And for some reason a lot of people seem to hate eye candy, so they can have fun that way.

Me? I want all the candy I can have. And the fact that blockbuster movies are being launched in 3d and making huge money proves a lot of people agree with my taste for candy.

[Norfindel]

It's not a brutal hack, it's just showing each eye what it needs to see. One of the things that cause headaches (cutscenes to different dephts) aren't so frequent in games, and a game designed for 3D could have less of them. It would be very interesting for games in 1st person perspective.

It only gives you a headache because of the polarization. I think.
Polarised 3D Glasses (Wikipedia)

From what i readed, there seems to be two main motives:
- Scene changes with different dephts.
- Rotation without head movement.

Those make your brain wonder WTF is going on

Polarization has nothing to do with it. There are polarized sunglases out there, and you can use them all day without any ill effects.

.

[PhanttoM]

I see many people calling 3D "just a gimmick" in a negative way.
I agree that as it is right now, it is just a visual gimmick. But lets remember, so is "better graphics" - It may not add anything to gameplay, but it will look cool.

Despite having said the above:
I'll have to admit that I haven't even cared about HD (blu-ray) until now, simply because higher resolution movies falls under what I'd call "eyecandy/gimmick" - which is something that falls into a lower priority.

But the way I see it now, I'll be getting + 2x eyecandyness instead of just one.

It is a very very small, but necessary step towards "true 3D".
Frankly I'm more interested in seeing big curved PC monitors for peripheral vision. (Like what you currently can do with 3 monitors and ATI eyefinity)

***EDIT***
ATI eyefinity + 3D vision.....mwuahaha!!